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In:Possibility and Necessity: Concepts and expressions of modality
Edited by Jean Albrespit, Christelle Lacassain and Tracey Simpson
[Studies in Language Companion Series 237] 2025
► pp. 336–366

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‘Can I just finish?’

The interplay between modality and force dynamics in strategies for holding the floor in political discourse

ORCiD logo with link | University of Lorraine
Published online: 4 November 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.237.15but
Abstract
The art of making political arguments can be studied in conjunction with the concept of power, where force is exerted upon a social actor or a given situation. A force-dynamic analysis of closed-class forms, including modal auxiliary verbs, adverbs of negation and subordinate conjunctions, makes it possible to demonstrate how possibility is construed as dependent upon necessity. This chapter focuses on the discourse of the Liberal Democrats in a variety of interactional contexts where an interlocutor is actively present, and in non-interactional contexts with only a passive audience. This study reveals how similar strategies for holding the floor are present even where contextual factors preclude any direct challenge to the speaker’s ability to hold the floor and complete their argument.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • 1.Theoretical considerations
    • 1.1Rhetoric and discourse
    • 1.2Force dynamics and discourse
    • 1.3Critical discourse studies in a multimodal context: Gesture
  • 2.Methodology
    • 2.1The corpus
    • 2.2Force-dynamic analysis
    • 2.3Pragmatic and multimodal considerations
  • 3.Presentation of data
  • 4.Discussion of the key force-dynamic schemata
    • 4.1Letting
    • 4.2Allowing
    • 4.3Overcoming
    • 4.4Holding the floor as an integrated strategy
  • Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
References (35)
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